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The Conversation Game

The Conversation game of speaking real conversational English. Try it out with a friend. 楽しの英会話ゲームアプリ！

About:

The conversation game was designed and created by Joshua Wheeler in collaboration with the students of the Shimokita English Conversation group in order to assist Japanese students to converse about several different topics in an easy egalitarian game format.

Rules:

Playing rules are stated on the cards themselves. Key points to this game is that speakers who are questioning the other members also grade the other members. Each turn every member gets to ask one question so every player also has an opportunity to grade each answer. A notable problem to watch out for is that players need to make eye contact with the speaker and the group, rather then make eye contact with the teacher only. This helps spur on conversation.

When printing the PDF set the settings so that it’s 6 pages to a sheet. Print the cards out and laminate them. To play the game make sure one player has a sheet of paper for scoring and a pencil. Follow the instructions on the card to get started playing. Make sure you are playing with at least two or more people.

Observations Playing the game:

I’ve found that playing this game with Japanese people from the same area, same age, and background that many of the players before playing seem to think that they all think alike. I think this is a stereotype that Japanese people have about their peer group often and that when playing this game, many players in order to score more than one point try to give long answers, as best they can, and find out in the process that everyone in group might have different answers to the same question. In a way this breaks-up the stereotype that many players have about their society, and hopefully gives players thoughts about breaking up stereotypes of other cultures as well.